Alma Mater to "Geoffrey Crayon"                  31

biographer. Another nephew, Pierre Paris Irving, would be
granted his AB in 1824, and in 1829, \vhcn Columbia awarded
the expatriate author his second honorary degree, and his first
doctorate,* another nephew, John Treat Irving, Jr., in time a
minor author, would graduate from the college. By the time
a third nephew, Theodore, also a minor author, received his hon¬
orary MA in 1837, any Irving family gathering automatically
became an alumni reunion.

It is not wholly clear what Irving meant by, "the very flattering
manner in which it was bestowed." The simplest explanation is
that he was referring to the "sheepskin," its customary Latin cita¬
tion, and the accompanying personal letter. But was some private
presentation ceremony arranged as well? The newspaper account
of the distant New York commencement exercises makes no men¬
tion of a formal announcement of Irving's degree in absentia. It
does however include a precise list of all graduates, and the order
of the academic procession, which ended with the Governor.
This began, says the Commercial Advertiser on August 7, 1821,
with "The Janitor of the College . . ."

Unfortunately the MA diploma is missing, and no record of the
citation on it has been found, but these may be recovered. A num¬
ber of the certificates and insignia of Irving's various honors and
appointments have survived, for example his Gold Medal in 1830
from the Royal Society of Literature, now in the collection of
Mr. C. Waller Barrett, incumbent chairman of the Friends of the
Columbia Libraries.

It is quite appropriate that this Irving-and-Columbia letter
should appear in print, for the first time, in the journal of a Library
which has carved in the literary roll of honor between its front
columns the name of Washington Irving, a distinguished honorary
alumnus.

* In 1831 Oxford conferred on Irving a D.C.L., and in 183;, the year of his
eventual return to the U.S., Harvard gave him an LL.D.